We were told that the Sonesta boats are similar to a franchise and that the owner of the St. George does not own any other boats and chooses to have it dock alone.

Docking in Luxor was the craziest because there are sooo many boats there. Here is a photo taking from the deck of the St. George in Luxor: http://larbes.com/photos/2009/1122-1124/large/image001.jpg
It shows the boats next to the St. George. Almost all of the boats in Luxor were lined up 5 or 6 deep, but not the St. George.

Also, we had a room on the starboard side (right side) going from Aswan to Luxor. We were happy that we almost always had a view of the Nile and not the dock when we were docked at land.

I highly recommend the St. George. Good luck. Have fun and stop back to let me know how it goes.

I had a question about the docking of St. George. Do they tie up with other boats, or do they have a separate dock.

I am thinking of taking this nile cruise.

Loved your pictures and travel reports.

The overnight train ride was a bit of a train wreck (haha) for me. I picked up a stomach bug in Cairo that bothered me for four or five days. I started feeling not great our last day in Cairo, and then started feeling very poor during our two hour wait for the train at the train station and then for the entire train ride. So, I wasn’t too pleased when we found out it was delayed for three hours – I just spent most of the time in my bed. Using the train’s public restroom was unfortunate for me – but probably moreso for everyone else :). Luckily, Kelly’s parents brought Cipro pills along with them, which cleared up my illness pretty quickly once I stopped being hardheaded and took them. But as Kelly said, I’m proud to say that I didn’t miss a single excursion – just sucked it up the whole time!

Sayid – we were excited to meet someone by the name of Sayid – just like one of the main characters of Lost!

Camel ride – the biggest difference to me is that you are signficantly higher on a camel than a horse. I’d guess our seats were eight or nine feet in the air.

Bottled water – the tap water throughout Egypt is not drinkable for tourists (I didn’t drink any, so I don’t think that was the source of my stomach problems, but you never know), so we were constantly hitting up the convenient shops to purchase water. We probably consumed 50 or so two-liter bottles of water during our trip. Luckily, they were only about 50 cents each.

Convoy to Abu Simbel – one of the strangest parts of this convoy was how the tour vans drove. You’d think that if 10-15 vehicles were driving together, they’d just follow each other. But no, these cars kepts passing each other back and forth (on a one lane each way highway), and they would constantly toggle their headlights (in the dark) off for minutes at a time. We never did quite figure out the reasons behind this behavior.

Checking in to the hotels and the cruise ship: one of the nice treats of arriving to each hotel and to the cruise ship was that they served us guests mango juice while we filled out our paperwork and they copied down our passport information. Mango juice is very tasty!

We (family of 5) made our our reservations through Sti Travel (http://www.sti-travel.com). We did a 10-day tour with Sti Travel. I highly recommend the Sonesta St. George – we couldn’t have asked for a better cruise. Let me know if you have any more questions.